Gemalto launches new hardware security module for payments

In what it claims is a first for the banking industry, digital security giant Gemalto has launched a single hardware security module (HSM) to secure a wide range of payment and transactions.

Gemalto’s SafeNet Luna EFT Payment HSM features a partitioning capability. This allows it to support a number of applications, payment types and transactions. In turn, it promises to simplify the cryptographic processes vital to keeping data secure in the financial industry.

Complex cryptography

The motivation behind Gemalto’s new hardware security module is clear: banks and financial services companies are required to use a certain level of encryption to protect customer and transaction data. The need for tighter security is growing, with the rise of new transaction types, such as peer-to-peer payments.

Traditionally, financial organizations rely on separate HSMs to encrypt individual payment operations and applications. Although security is always the priority, having a large number of these hardware security modules leads to a complicated infrastructure to monitor and manage.

Whether or not that increased complexity generates more problems than it solves is up for debate, but Gemalto is offering a new way forward. With a new ‘partitioning capability’, Gemalto’s SafeNet Luna EFT Payment HSM is essentially a single encryption platform that can be divided into multiple HSMs. This simplifies transaction security and offers a scalable solution for the financial services industry.

Because each partition functions independently, more data can be encrypted and a wider range of transactions can be secured. As a result, financial organizations are granted more flexibility, control and scalability. For example, Gemalto’s new hardware security module will help banks improve the speed at which transactions are processed and authorized in the cloud.

Trust improvements

Rob Westervelt, an analyst at market research company IDC, admits that while advances in technology have enabled exciting new services for financial institutions, security remains an important issue. “While the cloud brings endless opportunities for faster convenient banking and payments,” he said, “the challenge remains around security.”

“It’s especially important with the rise of mobile payments and cloud-enablement technology like host-card emulation (HCE) to implement a strong data security strategy with end-to-end encryption. Hardware Security Modules underlying security brings trust to these new types of transactions and payments.”

“Gemalto has a long history of enabling and securing payments from credit cards to mobile devices and our SafeNet HSM has a proven track record of protecting over $1 trillion transactions worldwide every day,” said Todd Moore, Senior Vice President for Encryption Products at Gemalto.

“By adding partitioning to the SafeNet Payment HSM, we are enabling our customers to reduce hardware, improve cloud usability, and decrease transaction processing times all while maintaining the same level of security required by the financial industry.”